emember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his
fever, in that first season when he was among us. He was out in a boat
one day, when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a place
where the water was rather shallow. "Jake"--you know Jake,--everybody
knows Jake--was rowing him. He promised to come to the spot and fish up
the ring if he could possibly find it. He was seen poking about with
fish-hooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was ever heard from him
about the ring. It was an antique intaglio stone in an Etruscan
setting,--a wild goose flying over the Campagna. Mr. Kirkwood valued it
highly, and regretted its loss very much.

While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake, with
a great basket, inquiring for Mr. Kirkwood. "Come," said Maurice to me,
"let us see what our old friend the fisherman has brought us. What have
you got there, Jake?"

"What I 've got? Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the
biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year. An'
I 've got somethin' else besides the pickerel. When I come to cut him
open, what do you think I faound in his insides but this here ring o'
yourn,"--and he showed the one Maurice had lost so long before. There it
was, as good as new, after having tried Jonah's style of housekeeping for
all that time. There are those who discredit Jake's story about finding
the ring in the fish; anyhow, there was the ring and there was the
pickerel. I need not say that Jake went off well paid for his pickerel
and the precious contents of its stomach. Now comes the chief event of
the evening. I went early by special invitation. Maurice took me into
his library, and we sat down together.

"I have something of great importance," he said, "to say to you. I
learned within a few days that my cousin Laura is staying with a friend
in the next town to this. You know, doctor, that we have never met since
the last, almost fatal, experience of my early years. I have determined
to defy the strength of that deadly chain of associations connected with
her presence, and I have begged her to come this evening with the friends
with whom she is staying. Several letters passed between us, for it was
hard to persuade her that there was no longer any risk in my meeting her.
Her imagination was almost as deeply impressed as mine had been at those
alarming interviews, and I had to explain to her fully that I had become
quite indifferent